Clinton seniors eagerly await new center

CLINTON — As work continues on the new senior center, Tena Zapantis is looking further ahead, to the day the workers pack up their tools and the town's senior citizens move into their new home.

"I hope it becomes a place where a senior can come and have their life enriched," she said.

The current location, in rented space at 200 High St., "was never designed to be a senior center," according to Zapantis, the center's director.

She said getting off High Street will be beneficial, solving issues from lack of parking to limited space for programs, which often fight for room or are operated in other locations.

"We're very hopeful people will take advantage of the building," Bill Grady Sr. said. Chairman of the Council on Aging, Grady said, "We need to reach out" to people who might not otherwise participate in senior center activities.

"There is a privacy issue," Zapantis said of the current location. "(Currently) Everything is so wide open." For instance, while meeting with a social worker, there is no closed meeting space. Even the offices are shared by multiple people.

"It's not conducive for our seniors," Zapantis said.

When offering things like chair yoga, she said, "Who wants to be exercising in a fishbowl?"

That exercise is one of the things Zapantis wants to promote.

"One of my biggest beliefs is physical fitness activities for seniors," she said.

Fitness includes everything from strength and balance classes to help avoid falls and fractures to tai chi in the park.

"We have activities even though we can't have them here," Zapantis said from her office at the existing center. "It's going to be nice when we get our new building that will be able to host a lot of these activities in a private room."

The privacy will be especially helpful for programs like tax and insurance advice.

She said she has visited other senior centers to see what they offer.

"There's just so much more we can offer our seniors here," Zapantis said. "We are having a lot of people take advantage of it."

Zapantis said she plans a survey in the September newsletter seeking input on what seniors want to see in their new center.

In the current space, Thursday Bingo is so cramped, every seat is taken, she said, and people coming in for anything else are pretty much squeezed out. For the summer, Bingo will move to the Elks hall.

The lunch program, offering meals through the Montachusett Opportunity Council, is popular, and includes meals delivered by volunteers. With a state-of-the-art kitchen, options for other meal offerings expands, she said.

For instance, the new kitchen could give cooks and bakers space to show off their skills, Grady said, and perhaps share their secret recipes with others.

But improvements won't take away from the building's history.

"There's a lot of dignity with the building," Grady said, something obvious for the Victorian-era styling.

Through the whole process, "we wanted to preserve it and do as little as we had to in order to remodel it," Grady said of the mansion, built in 1882 and overlooking Central Park.

Funding for programs will also be helped by the potential to bring in revenue.

In addition to adding $100,000 to the project funding, voters at the June town meeting approved a new revolving account for the senior center.

Zapantis said they realize the new center "will have a financial impact on the budget," but the revolving fund will allow revenue to be used to offset some costs. Any rental income could be less the town has to cover.

"We're being proactive in raising funds for extra costs," she said.

There are many off-site events in the community, and many will continue, but the new facility has the potential to host many of them, some perhaps later in a second building at the Foster Mansion site.

"There is so much potential in that carriage house," Zapantis said, as well as income opportunity for renting it out. The carriage house is currently being used for storage, Grady said.

Zapantis credited financial help from the Friends of Clinton Senior Center to support many of the programs.

Looking at the potential for more programs, Zapantis noted one strength of the senior center.